Notes on helpful things I learned or was reminded of while writing these sentences:

❶ The most common Chinese pronouns，他 (he and gender inclusive in mixed groups)，她 (she)， 牠 (animal)， and 它 (objects) are gender and type specific in writing, but not in speech (being all pronounced “ta1”), which explains why native Chinese speakers tend to get the English he, she, and it, mixed up. On the other hand, their character/written versions are more specific in differentiating between people, animals, and inanimate objects!

❷ 一邊。。。一邊 (yi1 bian4… yi1 bian4) is that Chinese structure for “while this…., this” that I find so fun!

❸ It is not uncommon for the second character in a word to “lose” it’s tone and become more neutral in speech. 來 (lai2) usually is spoken with the second tone.

❹ There is no plural of the nouns themselves in Chinese. The numerical value comes from the words describing the noun, so in this case since we are talking about a “whole” chicken, “all” of its feathers are implied.

❺ This character indicates that they can be “smart” about one thing, although not about many other things.

❻ 醜 (chou3) is another word that can be used instead of 難看 (nan2 kan4)